


Every Gun You Ever Held Went Off

by Sylvestris



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Salud Dream Team, Suspense, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvestris/pseuds/Sylvestris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Heisenberg is dead," Gus says. "He was killed some time ago."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Gun You Ever Held Went Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [panademonium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/panademonium/gifts).



> Title from 'Lost!' by Coldplay.

The gunfire stopped a long time ago, but Jesse keeps thinking he can hear something, feeling like something’s going to start happening again. There’s a friction burn on his jaw where the airbag deployed, and his right wrist feels jarred but not broken. His hand hovers near the grip of the gun in his pocket, shaking slightly.

“Give it a rest, kid,” Mike mutters in between laboured breaths, dusting himself off, sweeping granular fragments of glass out of his lap. “’s no one out there.”

As Mike tries to open his door, dented by the impact, Jesse spits out a mouthful of dust and exhaust fumes and looks around anyway, squinting against the glare off what remains of the truck’s windshield. Mike’s right. They’re in an arroyo in the middle of the Arizona high desert and there’s no one and nothing out here for miles, just the endless hollowing sound of the wind all around them, whistling through the holes shot through the truck. It makes him think of something that sends his heart lurching back into his throat.

"Wait, wait, wait," Jesse says. "The trailer's refrigerated, right? What kind of cooling system does it have?"

“How do you mean?"

"What type of gas does it use?" Jesse asks, fumbling with the door handle, trying to picture the right hazard diamond, trying to remember a throwaway bit of information that suddenly seems crucial. Halogenated chlorofluorocarbons. They’re heavy. They displace oxygen.

"No idea," says Mike. "What does it matter? It won’t be anything flammable, if that's what you're thinking."

“No, it’s not that… oh, shit..."

Jesse jumps out of the cab, landing awkwardly. The truck crashed into the ditch at a steep angle and the trailer looks like it might tip over, one side sunk in shadow, the other with its garish Pollos logo turned up towards the sun. Empty and tilting on its axles, it seems as fragile as paper, a box tossed to the side of the road. Bullet holes are scattered across the metal like punctuation marks, clustered towards the front of the storage bay, where their passengers were hiding. There’s a faint sweet smell in the air very close by, and as he scrambles up the soft ground he thinks he can feel a chill.

"Hey!” Jesse yells, pounding on the trailer wall. "You okay in there?" 

There’s no response. Jesse pulls his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth, takes a deep breath, and wrenches open the doors. Cold immediately hits his skin, a heavy, dragging sort of cold. The hissing of the coolant sounds like water running at high pressure. Gus and Lydia are slumped against each other at the far end of the empty trailer, and there's blood, a lot of blood. Even from this distance and in the dark he can see that.

“Oh, no, no, no. Oh, shit. Mike!”

“What’s wrong?”

"The coolant's leaking. They’re poisoned…”

Holding his breath, he climbs inside. Gus is barely conscious, struggling to sit up, his breaths coming horribly slowly, and Lydia's completely out, curled up next to him as if she’d just laid down there to sleep. Jesse grabs her under the arms and drags her up the sloping floor and out into the air again. She looks like she might be dead. Her hair tumbles across her white, open-mouthed face and for an awful second he thinks of someone else.

"Get her away from here," he tells Mike. "Like, way back, as far as you can. She needs air. And check her breathing. Check her pulse.”

Jesse scrambles back inside, his hands starting to burn from the cold, and manages to pull Gus to his feet. One of the storage shelves has collapsed, leaving twisted metal everywhere, and the only light comes from the scattering of bullet holes. 

"Okay. Okay," Jesse mutters, breathing in without meaning to. Instantly he stumbles, feeling cloudy and half-asleep all of a sudden, nearly losing his grip on Gus, and forces himself to fight it. With his lungs beginning to ache, he pulls Gus' arm over his shoulders and lunges for the door.

 

SIX WEEKS EARLIER

Hank pushes the sketch artist’s portrait forward across the table, ignoring the look Merkert is giving him, one of skepticism toned down by forced sympathy. If he thinks about it for too long it feels downright insulting. It’s been a rough year— a rough couple of years, really— but he hasn’t gone off the deep end, despite what anybody might think.

“So, first of all, this guy, our prime suspect in the Gale Boetticher killing… we still have no idea who he is. No leads at all, just one witness statement. No further sightings after that. I’ve been checking in with APD every now and then, but it’s like he just vanished off the face of the earth.”

He leafs through a few papers and swaps the portrait for a high-resolution forensics photograph of a cartridge.

“Now, Boetticher was shot with one of these… point three-eighty ACP, same as the one that killed Walt,” Hank continues, pulling a similar photograph from the second folder. “’Course, that doesn’t mean anything in itself, but both times it was a single shot to the head, fired at close range... both victims were at home alone when they were attacked… no signs of struggle, no forced entry, and in both cases the shooter left the scene leaving the main door open. Same M.O. If we’re talking about the same person… it’s likely he knew them both.”

“If looking into Boetticher means you want us to reopen that investigation into Gus Fring…” Merkert shakes his head.

“Well, we never found anything on Fring, did we? I’ll readily admit, it wasn’t my finest hour. Might have been barking up the wrong tree for a while there. But we do know he was at Boetticher’s apartment not long before he was killed. Maybe, just maybe, it’s worth looking into again.”

“I know it’s been, what, almost a year since…?” Merkert ventures. “But Hank, with all due respect… this is your brother-in-law’s killer. We all think we can handle cases close to home until they happen to us. I accept there are similarities with what happened to Boetticher, but I really don't know if it's enough to make a case.”

“No, no, I get it. Trust me. I just… I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t seem to shake it… what if there was a link between them?”

 

While waiting for Gus to answer the door, Jesse surprises himself by reflexively patting the pocket where he keeps his cigarettes. Things aren’t anything like they were when Mr. White was around, but meetings like this still make him a little nervous. Perhaps it’s the extra layer of security Gus mentioned that’s put him on edge. Meeting their chemical supplier called for special measures, he’d said, because it was crucial that their identity be protected.

Jesse had imagined the nameless supplier as a Don Eladio-type figure, or maybe someone like a younger Hector Salamanca, or, God forbid, Tuco; certainly not anyone like the woman he finds waiting for him in Gus’ living room. She stands a little shorter than him, although she’s wearing what must be four-inch heels. Her eyes are wide and anxious and her brows are tipped together in a faint frown, as if she’s already decided she’s not happy with how this meeting is playing out. She has the same neat, precise air as Gus, but none of his calmness. 

“Lydia, this is Jesse Pinkman. Our chemist,” Gus says.

Lydia gives him a quick nod. Her hand when he shakes it feels cool and delicate, though her grip is firm.

“Well,” she says, folding her hands together in front of her and rocking nervously on the balls of her feet. “Shall we get started?”

It looks like she and Gus have been working for a while. She has a plan of the lab spread out on the dining table, and several folders full of accounts.

"So far, we've been delivering your supplies on a weekly basis,” Lydia begins. “However, my company is making changes regarding inventory and database design which will make our transactions more complicated for me to handle. Besides, there are always security concerns with a pattern of regular delivery, so we’d like to make a few changes to how it's done." 

“What sort of changes?" 

"First of all, moving to an ad hoc delivery schedule, which will cut down on risk," Lydia says. "Obviously, we have to keep in mind who may be watching. We've mainly been working through a third party, the manager of Golden Moth here in Albuquerque, but the chemicals ultimately come from my warehouse in Houston. You would have the scope to contact me and my associates directly to arrange deliveries as and when you need them. However, we both feel that the less is stored on site, the better.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Jesse says, wondering if he should have brought a notepad.

“Take the methylamine, for example. How much would you typically use per batch?"

“Uh, twenty-seven gallons.”

Lydia makes a quick note.

“And this is using Boetticher’s process?”

“It’s reductive amination via P2P, if that’s what you mean.”

“Jesse never worked directly with Gale Boetticher,” Gus says. A quick, cryptic look passes between the two of them, and Lydia nods.

“So, twenty-seven gallons per two-hundred-pound batch, that’s effectively one barrel every week… Gus and I have been talking about smaller batches. One hundred, one fifty, maybe.”

Jesse looks from Gus to Lydia and finds their expressions strikingly similar.

“I thought two hundred was as low as we could go and still turn a profit,” he says.

“In the beginning, that was true,” says Gus. “But given how much has changed since we started working together, I think it’s time for us to take another look at our strategy.”

 

“So, what’s the plan?” Jesse asks Mike. It’s a little after six o’clock in the morning, and he’s warming his hands on his cup of coffee until it’s cool enough to drink.

“The usual,” says Mike, salting his plate of bacon and eggs. “We drive out, the boss has his meeting, we go home, and hopefully nothing exciting is gonna happen along the way. Lydia’s coming with him, so he wanted a fourth person there.”

“What, like as a bodyguard?”

Mike nods, though he’s wearing an odd arch look. “You’re her guy, so to speak.”

“She didn’t seem too comfortable with me before,” says Jesse. Mike scoffs slightly in response. “It seemed almost like I’d scared her.”

“Lydia’s scared of her own shadow. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“Uh, does she carry?” Jesse asks, more out of curiosity than anything else.

“No. She prefers not to. In a pinch, yeah, she knows how to use a gun.”

Where exactly did Lydia come from? Jesse sits next to her in the back seat and watches her nervously wringing her hands in her lap. She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, he’s noticed. When they pull up in the scrubland near two parked cars and climb out, Gus offers her his hand. The thin, sharp heels of her shoes keep sinking into the soft ground, so that she has to stand with her knees locked.

Jesse doesn’t recognise any of the three men waiting for them. All Mike would tell him was that they operate out of Phoenix. Their leader, Declan, stands squinting into the sun, arms folded.

“Fring,” he says. “It’s been a while. Care to tell me what this is all about?”

“I have an offer I’d like to make,” Gus says, smooth-toned. “I control most of the territory between Albuquerque and the Arizona border, from Farmington as far south as Catron County. The region have been profitable for years, but I’m looking to focus my activities elsewhere. Rather than simply leave it for local groups to quarrel over, I’m offering it to you, subject to negotiation.”

“Mm. Catron County, huh? How’d you manage to turn a profit over there? From what I heard they’ve got more elk than people.”

“We have a distributor in the village of Reserve who accepts low-volume deliveries,” Gus says. “It’s a small market, but well worth investing in.”

“See, word travels fast in places like that, and what I’m wondering is why would anyone out there make do with our product when they could drive fifty miles for some of Heisenberg’s blue?”

“Heisenberg is dead,” says Gus. “He was killed some time ago. He’s no longer relevant.”

When Jesse thinks about killing Mr. White, it’s always with an odd feeling like that of dropping a stone into a deep well and waiting to hear it hit water. He rubs the back of his neck, wondering if he’s somehow giving himself away, if any of these men could know what he did.

“Whoever you got cooking for you… that’s more the kind of deal I’m interested in making.”

“My chemist is off the table,” Gus says, his tone just a fraction less yielding. “I thought I had made that quite clear.”

“Fair enough. But it’s all in the formula, isn’t it? I mean, could be your Heisenberg wasn’t as special as everyone made him out to be.”

Jesse dares to glance at Mike, and gets a stony-faced look in return.

 

“Why’d he bring Lydia, anyway?”

“Politics,” Mike says, without looking up from his crossword. “That’s part of it. Lydia doesn’t do a lot of face-to-face deals. Bringing her along is a show of trust.”

“I know this is probably all top secret need-to-know-type stuff, but why would Gus want to downsize?”

“Well, for one thing, he wants to shift some of the risk onto somebody else,” Mike says. “The western counties… again, that’s mostly politics, not a lot of real money in it… there’ll be bigger changes elsewhere. The word is Agent Schrader’s back in his old post at the DEA and he’s been looking over some of his old cases.”

Jesse’s heart thumps hard against his ribs. He leans into the table, suddenly afraid they’ll be overheard.

“What— what cases? You mean— _us_?”

“He’s been off our trail for a while, but I wouldn’t count on it being forever.”

 

The lab sounds different as soon as he steps inside. Chris and Tyrus are already at work shrouding the vats in protective plastic.

“What’s going on?”

“Lab’s moving,” Tyrus says. “The boss didn’t tell you?”

“He told me we were downsizing, not— what the hell? Where’re we moving to?”

Tyrus half-shrugs and indicates the phone on the wall.

“I’m very sorry I couldn’t give you more notice,” Gus says, and he does sound sincere. “But your location is no longer safe. The lab fittings need to be removed as soon as possible. I’ve arranged for them to be taken elsewhere.”

“ _Where_ elsewhere?”

“In the meantime, I must ask you to come with me to Phoenix tomorrow. Declan has offered to help us re-establish production at a safer site.”

“Whoa. Wait. Last time I saw him, he was talking about headhunting me.”

“That won’t happen,” Gus says firmly, and again, there’s not a single tell in his voice. “It’s a complicated matter, and I need both you and Lydia to help me negotiate. Please, Jesse.”

 

Gus was telling the truth about one part, at least. When he arrives, before dawn, Lydia’s waiting for him in the chilly loading bay, her arms wrapped protectively around herself. Jesse wishes he could smoke.

"He didn't tell me a lot about what was going to happen once we got to Phoenix," Jesse says. Lydia gives him a quick, sharp look.

"I imagine he told you everything you needed to know," she says, although she doesn't sound too sure of herself. Her restless energy does nothing to settle Jesse's nerves.

“There was this guy…" Jesse begins, because the silence has got too much and he can't keep it back any longer. "One of Mike’s guys, I guess… I never really talked to him, but his name was Victor. Did you know him?”

Lydia nods.

“Well he, uh… the part that matters is he made a mistake one day, and Gus had to kill him.”

Jesse watches Lydia closely for a reaction. She briefly closes her eyes.

“He could have just shot the poor dude, but he was… he was really angry at the time, and… well, it was messed up.”

“I don’t need to hear the details,” Lydia mutters, sounding strained.

“Gus slit his throat,” Jesse says flatly, “and held him there till he bled out. He did it in the lab. He made us watch.”

Lydia’s not meeting his eyes any more. She blinks a few times, focusing into the middle distance.

“I guess it was quick, but when it was happening it felt like forever. And Gus knew what he was doing, like, he knew there was going to be so much blood he’d have to put on rain gear first…”

“Please,” Lydia cuts in, holding up a hand. She looks slightly sick.

“Gus told me once how he saw things in people,” Jesse says, after a moment’s silence. “Qualities. And Mike said that what he saw in me was loyalty, you know? I just keep thinking about this guy Victor. I mean, he was loyal. He did what he was told. Then one time he messed up, and Gus killed him.”

Lydia breathes deeply and composes herself, tries to smooth the shock out of her expression.

“Yes, well,” she says. “Loyalty only gets you so far.”

As Jesse helps her climb into the back of the trailer, he sees the shadow of a shoulder holster under her jacket.

 

“She was bleeding,” Gus says through his teeth, one hand over his broken ribs, as soon as Jesse sits him down about fifty yards from the wrecked truck. “She— Lydia?”

“Hey, take it easy, we got her…”

Jesse glances at Lydia, lying flat on her back in the dust with Mike hovering beside her. She’s breathing again, but her lips are still blue. He knows that she and Gus were wearing Kevlar vests and yet they’re both so covered in blood that it’s hard to tell who was shot and where.

“Oh, shit,” Jesse mutters. “Okay. Okay. Where’d she get hit?”

“Left… left arm.”

“Where’s Gus?” Lydia slurs.

“Get her jacket off,” Mike tells Jesse, handing him a pair of shears. “I’ll take care of him.”

For a second, stunned, Jesse doesn’t know what to do with them, then he remembers the hospital tent in Mexico and cuts Lydia’s sleeve open up to her shoulder. She doesn’t react, not even when the blades come back glossy with blood.

“Hey. Lydia,” Jesse says, trying to rouse her. “He’s right here. It’s okay.”

Gus is turning over his broken glasses and wrapping them in a handkerchief.

“Where are we?”

“We’re in Arizona,” says Mike. “We left the highway about an hour ago, which puts us about two hundred miles out of Phoenix. Do you know what happened?”

Gus nods, leaning forward over his knees.

“That stuff weighs more than oxygen,” Jesse mutters, pressing gauze against the wound in Lydia’s arm. His hands are trembling. “It sinks down in your lungs, that’s what makes it so dangerous… you need to breathe, okay? Take deep breaths.”

Lydia’s eyes flutter open, but she’s not with him yet.

“How badly damaged was the truck?” Gus asks.

“Totalled,” says Mike flatly. “We were lucky to get as far as we did.”

“Was it Declan’s men?”

“I don’t know of anybody else it could have been.”

Even when the shots started coming, Jesse could tell it wasn’t a trap, at least not the kind of trap Gus would set. Declan must only have decided that they were more trouble than they were worth.

 

"Are you sure you should be out here? I mean, you... you really don't look too good." 

Lydia gives him a stubborn look, then puts her head down and keeps walking. She's still a little unsteady on her feet, and she keeps her right hand clamped firmly around her left arm. Jesse can't decide whether she's out of her mind or just a lot tougher than he'd thought. 

"I'd rather come with you than... sit there and die waiting," she says, out of breath although they're taking it slowly. She grasps Jesse's outstretched hand and lets him help her climb over a rocky outcrop. "Besides, Mike would need my help getting this thing to work..." 

None of them have cell reception, but the truck was equipped with a satellite phone, the most important of the few things they scavenged from the wreck, and now Lydia wants to get to higher ground before calling for help, although it’ll soon be too dark to read the number Mike scribbled down for her. Jesse looks back again, making sure they're still within sight of the makeshift shelter where Gus and Mike are staying. 

"Here," Lydia says, at the top of a small incline. "Here's good."

Jesse doesn't know whether it really is the best place or if she's just not capable of walking any further without a rest, but he sits down with her anyway.

"Did you check the GPS in the cab?" 

"Yeah. It wouldn't turn on." 

Lydia nods, lips pursed, and looks up toward the sky. A single plane is heading east, thousands of feet up in silence.

 

"This is Lydia Rodarte-Quayle calling for Mike Ehrmantraut," Lydia says as soon as the line connects. She sounds slurred and exhausted again, huddled in on herself in the cold. "We need your help. We're stranded. We're…”

She pauses to breathe and gather her thoughts.

“I can’t give you an exact location, but we're on ground beneath high-altitude airway J18. Somewhere west of Whiteriver. We came off the main road… No, no, I... I c-can't give you coordinates, but we've been ... we've been watching air traffic heading northeast from Phoenix and I'm familiar with the routes in this region... J18. J one eight. Look it up on a chart. ...Four. There's four of us. Yes, we need medical help.”

Jesse takes his jacket off and wraps it around her shoulders. Her eyes keep drifting closed. 

"Okay,” Lydia murmurs. “Okay. Thank you." 

"Is he coming?" 

"Two hours," Lydia says, putting the handset down and pulling Jesse's jacket closer around herself. Down in the hollow where Mike and Gus are sheltering, a flashlight beam flickers and falls away like a stone dropping into dark water.


End file.
